Pippa Norris has added two interesting books to her extensive oeuvre on the broad theme of democracy. Democratic Deficit focuses on citizens' attitudes toward democracy, investigating the alleged decline in support for democracy across the globe and the causes and consequences thereof. Making Democratic Governance Work analyzes whether democracy, bureaucratic governance, or both are conducive to the production of desirable goods, such as prosperity, welfare, and peace.

Framing Democratic Deficit as an updated and extended version of Critical Citizens (1999), the author employs David Easton's framework of political support, distinguishing between different levels and components of support. A country's “democratic deficit” is defined and measured as the “mean difference between democratic aspirations and satisfaction [with democracy]” (p. 249), as expressed by respondents to mass surveys, such as the World Value Survey.

Part II of the book provides detailed analyses of the different aspects of support for democracy over the past decades. In Chapter 4, Norris finds that contrary to common commentaries, at least in Western democracies, there is no consistent decline in either institutional trust or national pride. Chapter 5 reveals that also beyond the West, “the endorsement of democratic attitudes … is almost universal” (p. 86); that trust in institutions and a sense of national belonging are higher in autocracies than in democracies; but also that citizens in established democracies are, unsurprisingly, more satisfied with the way that democracy works in their country and firmer in rejecting autocratic principles than people living in nondemocracies. The descriptive inference in Chapter 6 shows that the democratic deficit is not increasing within either old or young democracies.

Part III analyzes the causes of the democratic deficit and finds that rising aspirations of citizens (Chapter 7), their knowledge of democratic principles and practices (Chapter 8), the tone and style of the news (Chapter 9), and the failing performance, both procedurally and substantively, of the political systems (Chapter 10) do matter to some extent. In each chapter, Norris digests a voluminous body of literature and manages to rectify some of its core claims. For instance, she finds that contrary to expectations formulated by modernization theorists, “self-expression values are linked with greater democratic satisfaction, not less” (p. 134) and, more broadly, “that the evidence does not support the broad cultural claim that processes of … societal modernization are driving a growing democratic deficit” (p. 135). Other findings are more in line with established knowledge, for example, that the longer a country's historical experience with democracy, the smaller the share of citizens subscribing to nondemocratic principles or cherishing democracy for purely instrumental rather than normative reasons.

In Part IV, the democratic deficit is converted from the dependent to an independent variable, and Norris concludes that, indeed, democratic orientations matter, but also that economic and human development, rather than cultural values, are more strongly related to democratization (p. 232).

Norris's capacity to condense many arguments and data into an informative and pleasant-to-read book is admirable. Many of her conclusions are plausible—some of them so much, indeed, that it is difficult to disagree. Her interpretations of some of the findings might be deemed as overtly optimistic, though. This applies to one of her major points, namely, that contrary to common complaints and fears, there is only a “trendless fluctuation” (p. 4), rather than a decline in support for democracy around the globe. While her empirical evidence is convincing, it is also true that at least some elements of support are already at such low levels that they can barely evidence further decline. The fact that liberal democracies can survive for decades with consistently low forms of support might mean that citizens are resigned to the fact that democracy is less consequential for them and that they therefore have learned to expect little. The author provides a similarly optimistic view on the consistently high levels of national pride. While from an Eastonian perspective such diffuse support has positive implications, it might at best be a mixed bag for the prospects of democracy. In contemporary crisis-ridden Europe, at least, many interpret rising nationalistic feelings as a bane rather than a boon for the sustainability of democracy.

Another issue to consider is the way that Norris employs multilevel modeling as her main inferential tool (next to several very useful graphs). Given her interest in citizens' attitudes in different countries, this makes much sense. Yet on several occasions, even better use of this technique could have been made by specifying cross-level interaction terms. This seems particularly warranted when the theories under investigation (e.g., Chapter 10) stipulate that power-sharing institutions (macro-level factors) are expected to reduce the satisfaction differential between electoral winners and losers measured at the micro level.

Norris introduces Making Democratic Governance Work as an attempt to formulate more convincing answers to vexing questions asked by the global development policy community. Is democracy, indeed, good for desirable goals like economic prosperity, human development, peace, and security? Should the promotion of democracy be prioritized over functioning governance structures or vice versa? Norris's answer is straightforward: Promote both aspects simultaneously, as both democracy and what she calls “bureaucratic governance” have independent and positive impacts on desirable policy outcomes.

The book is a pleasant read partly because of its logical and coherent structure. The first two chapters introduce the literature on the causes of the three main dependent variables of interest—economic prosperity, human development, and peace and security—and propose as the key explanation the “unified theory of democracy + governance” (p. 7), with both elements being necessary but not sufficient for effective development. Governance is understood in a Weberian sense in terms of bureaucratic quality, and is measured through the Quality of Government index provided by the Political Risk Service Group. Democracy, in turn, is understood in a Dahlian sense as liberal democracy, and is measured by Freedom House and the Polity IV data. Juxtaposing these two dimensions, Norris develops a regime typology with four types: “bureaucratic democracies” (hypothesized to display the most effective policy performance); “patronage autocracies” (least effective); and the two mixed types “patronage democracy” and “bureaucratic autocracies” (Figure 2.3, p. 39).

In Part II, almost 200 countries over the past decades are classified according to this typology, revealing that, indeed, democracy and bureaucratic governance are both conceptually and empirically distinct phenomena. And in Part III, Norris analyzes the effect of her regime indicators. Her findings overwhelmingly support her main argument: Both democracy and bureaucratic governance are conducive to prosperity (Chapter 5); to many, but not all, aspects of human development and social welfare (Chapter 6); and, with some qualifications, to preventing internal conflict and civil wars (Chapter 7).

Making Democratic Governance is a nicely written book with a high degree of scholarly depth, breadth, and methodological awareness. All of these features make it a fine piece of academic work. Norris's declared goal, though, is to help the global policy community deal with countries in transition. It remains to be seen if the book's major message of promoting both democracy and governance manages to convince those in the policy community who, so far, have thought differently. There are several reasons for being skeptical.

First, some of the hard questions that follow from this prescription are dealt with only in passing. For instance, if resources are scarce (and they always are), should international donors prioritize both democracy and governance structures even if this means that both goals are imperfectly implemented?

Second, does the empirical evidence really show that democratic governance is needed for development and peace? Strictly speaking, testing this claim would require the specification of an interaction term between the (continuous) variables measuring democracy and governance. The analysis would have been stronger if Norris had used, in line with her conceptual framework, a variable reflecting her fourfold regime typology in the regression analyses.

Third, even with interaction terms included, would these statistical models transform disbelieving policymakers into “democratic governance” promoters? Policymakers are routinely confronted with intricate and detailed questions of timing, sequencing, tactics, strategies, and so on—most of them specific to groups of similar cases about which policy decisions need to be made. The statistical models, in contrast, take a high-flying, static, bird's-eye view. This makes them powerful tools for condensing huge amounts of information into succinct statements about net effects. This is how we learn that, on average and net of everything else, both democracy and bureaucratic governance independently contribute to producing good things—and Norris deserves much credit for showing this in meticulous empirical work. But policymakers might also need instructions on whether and how the positive effect of democracy and governance depends on well-defined context conditions that are found in specific cases in need of policy review.

Norris partially responds to this need for more grounded information by offering, at the end of several chapters, paired comparisons of contrasting cases. An additional strategy could be to tailor the cross-case analysis so as to unveil the specific contexts in which the combination of democracy and governance is conducive to development or peace. Methods rooted in set theory like Qualitative Comparative Analysis (see Charles C. Ragin, Redesigning Social Inquiry, 2008) give premium to such conjunctural causation and might therefore offer some additional insights. Applying this methodology seems apt also because on various occasions, Norris explicitly employs the language of set relations. She concludes, for instance, that “[d]emocracy and governance … both are necessary (although not sufficient) to achieve progress” (p. 133); or that “power-sharing arrangements cannot be claimed to be sufficient for containing communal violence…. Nor can it be claimed that power-sharing arrangements are necessary” (p. 183). Such statements about set relations would stand on more solid empirical ground if derived from methods that are explicitly designed (and only good) for identifying set relations.

One last quibble is that the operationalization of Norris's regime typology is contestable. The point is not so much that several of the data sets she uses (e.g., Freedom House or Polity IV) are known for being problematic. Rather, the issue seems to be that more explicit theoretical and conceptual criteria are needed to establish qualitative distinctions between different regime types. This challenge cannot be resolved via empirical induction only, that is, by standardizing the democracy and governance variables and then using their respective midpoints as the thresholds for distinguishing qualitative differences between types of regimes (Chapter 3). Not only is this classification strategy heavily dependent on properties of the data (drop or add some cases and the midpoint changes location) rather than the conceptual meaning of these types; it also puts many cases ambiguously close to these thresholds.

All of these critical reflections notwithstanding, both books are worth reading. Despite their common theme, roughly similar cases, and at least partially same data, they contain refreshingly little overlap in content and conclusions. Scholars and policymakers interested in democracy should read both books.